Thursday, November 08, 2012

China submarines to soon carry nukes, draft U.S. report says

A Pair of Type-094 Jin-Class Submarines

By Jim Wolf, Reuters Washington, D.C.

(Reuters) - China appears to be within two
years of deploying submarine-launched nuclear weapons, adding a new leg to its
nuclear arsenal that should lead to arms-reduction talks, a draft report by a
congressionally mandated U.S. commission says.

China is alone among the original nuclear weapons states to be expanding its
nuclear forces, the report said. The others are the United States, Russia,
Britain and France.
Beijing is "on the cusp of attaining a credible nuclear triad of land-based
intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and
air-dropped nuclear bombs," the report says.
China has had a largely symbolic ballistic missile submarine capability for
decades but is only now set to establish a "near-continuous at-sea strategic
deterrent," the draft said.
Chinese President Hu Jintao has made it a priority to modernize the country's
navy. China launched its first aircraft carrier, purchased from Ukraine and then
refurbished, in September.

The deployment of a hard-to-track, submarine-launched leg of China's nuclear
arsenal could have significant consequences in East Asia and beyond. It also
could add to tensions between the United States and China, the world's two
biggest economies.
Any Chinese effort to ensure a retaliatory capability against a U.S. nuclear
strike "would necessarily affect Indian and Russian perceptions about the
potency of their own deterrent capabilities vis-à-vis China," the report said,
for instance.

Beijing already has deployed two of as many as five of a new class of
nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine. The JIN-class boat is due to carry
the JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic missile with an estimated range of about
7,400 km (4,600 miles).
The new submarines and the JL-2 missile will give Chinese forces its "first
credible sea-based nuclear capability," the U.S. Defense Department said in its
own 2012 annual report to Congress on military and security developments
involving China.